My date took me to a bar that was open late. We sat round a splendid banquette like pashas. At the table one tier down, a girl sitting with her friends unfurled a really strange laugh. It was high and sort of squeaky-grunty, very loud: within moments she had drained the whole place of its […]
On the bus coming home from our forest walk we passed a billboard for Hochzeitswelt: Wedding World. My partner says it’s a giant sales emporium but I am convinced it is some kind of fun park. At the market hall we got out and walked. I was noticing the graffiti – hereabouts is my own […]
Yesterday a German friend asked me, could you ever imagine to live in Germany permanently. I guess my laugh was unflattering. Why not, he said. I’m sorry, but… the way you guys run your country – it’s like a bunch of very well-behaved eldest children looking after the place while their mummy and daddy are […]
Cavernous cafe in Berlin during the changeover period from Friday afternoon caff to Friday night bar. The music is gradually speeding up and the staff become flirtier, including with each other. People still working on their laptops are hunched with concentration, trying to get it all down. Two extremely buff men who came in with […]
Walking home past an outdoor restaurant in town that provides rugs for its hardier patrons. Everyone else was huddled indoors, it’s barely ten degrees and the wind is icy. A woman wearing a piled confection of blonded whipped hair drew on her cigarette as I passed and said, drawlingly, “…but it’s ok. I paid him […]
Went to the outdoor store to try on their $1000 goose-down & coyote fur jackets. “Made in Canada,” the sales guy explained as I was falling about laughing at the price: “Canadian wages.” “Ah,” I said. “Everyone wants Fair Trade but no one wants to pay any more for it.” He leveled his trigger finger […]